Metamorphosis
by Travithian Axile
Summary: Light sacrifices himself to himself. It's an old story. One-shot, Yotsuba arc, from the beginning to the end.


**Title: **Metamorphosis  
**Author: **axilet  
**Rating: **G  
**Word Count: **1,400  
**Characters:** Light, L, Kira  
**Genre: **Angst  
**Summary: **Light sacrifices himself to himself. Yotsuba arc, from the beginning to the end.  
**Notes: **The Yotsuba arc was my favorite; I've been wanting to write something on it for a long time.

* * *

The wolf in the trap will tear off its own leg rather than sit and wait for death at the hands of the hunter. You will tear out the entirety of your being and bury it where it will never be found, so that when they cut open your chest and read the shapes of your entrails, the fall of your bones—they will find nothing but him, curled up like a homunculus inside the shell of your corpse: the boy you grew over, inch by inch, like the layer of calluses on the pads of your fingers, strongest where he was weak.

You breathe in, out; balanced on a knife's edge of tension, the words that will obliterate you on your lips. Death is laughing on the other side of the room, ready to reap you and lay you to rest. But instead of a scythe he holds a book of judgment—_yours_. For the greater good you will relinquish your role, step down to rise again in glory another day.

You always did enjoy a dramatic monologue. Fortunately Death is patient, because it is so fun to see what you will do next to stay ahead (always only a little ahead) of his long reach. You trust he will find this much more entertaining than the traditional offer of a game of chess. You speak, the blade tips and falls, snaps the thread of your thoughts cleanly into two, _what are you thinking now, L_ and—

* * *

—what were you _thinking_?

You keep asking yourself that question, as if raising the possibility of an answer is contingent upon repetition.

Meanwhile, you dream: dreams strewn with impassable chasms, locked doors; a labyrinth with no center and a red string frayed and useless in your grasp. The nights are spent tossing and turning as you flee through a dark forest, searching for the pale trail of breadcrumbs that will take you home again.

(Ryuzaki, jabbed by a sharp elbow once too often, tacks on a percentage point to your Kira score, despite the low, low likelihood that Kira suffers from guilt-induced nightmares.)

You wake: cold, exhausted, and afraid, the cuff on your wrist biting into the flesh where the chain pulls taut, the pain a welcome anchor to reality. Sometimes you will find Ryuzaki's eyes staring at you, round as coins and silver where the persistent glow from the monitors catches them. Watching, always watching, until the weave of your skin frays threadbare under the onslaught—for Kira, as though he is a cancer in your cells, a genetic aberration that can be extracted and dissected for data points and analyzed into _making sense_. That is L's method, the means of his incredible successes. While most of the world shies from understanding who and what they deem monstrous, holding aloft their labels of_ insanity_ and_evil_ like warding charms, L pokes and prods, L is never afraid to get blood on his hands or the taint of madness on his brain. You have to respect that, but only grudgingly for being on the receiving end.

"What do you dream of, Light-kun?" Ryuzaki used to ask, before even he tired of this game. There is only one answer he wants, and you know better than to give it. There is a wall, you never tell him. You dream that you bang your fists and your head against it until they bleed and break, and still you are shut out, and you do not even know what is on the other side, or why you must get there.

Kira, Ryuzaki thus never answers. It is Kira on the other side.

You catch yourself rubbing your thumb and index finger together, the skin rasping where it has been raised and roughened. You conduct elaborate thought experiments of what it is like to wield Kira's power, and finds yourself meandering down disturbingly dark roads. You become angry, breathlessly angry, with a rage that burns through you like a forest fire and leaves your mouth gritty with the taste of ashes. Your fists itch to knock Ryuzaki's face off—your_ friend's_ face, and not just because of his stupid percentage points, his ceaseless insinuations. You fear that part of you has turned traitor; you fear that you have no idea who is being betrayed by whom.

"Consider this premise carefully," Ryuzaki says. "Yagami Light was Kira. And Kira's power moved to another person. Now Yagami Light does not remember being Kira."

"Did it transfer because Yagami Light willed it? Or did it transfer because someone behind Yagami Light willed it?"

"Given this premise," you say, because you are honest, because you have promised yourself to be cooperative, to be a _good _person— "Yagami Light willed it."

If you do not remember, are you still Kira? Or are you someone else? The man is not the same as the boy; the lifetime that separates them is bridged only by memory, time's scourge on the shape of the soul. Yet—and yet—Kira did not come out of nowhere, a creature fully sprung from the nightmares of criminals. Kira was grown, organically, from seeds planted deep that bore deadly fruit once watered with opportunity. _This world is rotten_, he (you) had thought. _If only I could fix this, if only I could change things, make everything better..._

For there can be no butterfly without first the caterpillar or the chrysalis which wrought its slow invisible metamorphosis in the dark, step by unthinkable step. There are people who do not deserve to live by any acceptable objective standard. Kira sets that standard; Kira draws the line in the sand the scum of society will soon learn to fear to cross. _Change or die_—the simplest of mechanisms that had driven the greatest progress in every conceivable field since the first breath of life in the newborn world.

Kira obviously considers himself above everyone else and their man-made laws; God in the sky, judge, jury and executioner all at once. Terrible as the concept is you think you would prefer to be manipulated from afar, dancing to the tug and slack of unseen strings. A mere puppet cannot be hated, only pitied. You pity Higuchi even as you despise him for the oh so _common_ banality of his ambitions, looking on as he panics in the center of a tightening circle, fallen prey to yet another puppetmaster cleverer than he. The end is in sight now. Surely, Ryuzaki would know, if Kira returns. Surely, Kira cannot outsmart both of you, not when you are vigilant and watching.

"Ryuzaki, is it true? Let me see that."

You grab the notebook, flipping it open. Your heart and your soul, long parted, tumble free.

You _know_, at last, who you truly are.

You open your mouth to scream, to warn Ryuzaki, _anything_—

* * *

—and, many long months later, you _breathe_.

Only seconds have passed but you are acutely aware of the seismic shift in your perceptions, the clarity of your vision freed from clinging scales. Outside the helicopter Higuchi is sobbing in his chains, calling desperately upon a god that will never come. You can barely restrain a smile of contempt.

"Are you all right?"

The question appears sincere. L looks at you, and you look back and remember—the fights, the nights spent in the same bed, the clink of the chain in between you as you sat side by side, minds racing together to identical destinations, taking shortcuts and leaping hurdles at lightspeed. Fondness, hatred mingle within you into a complex rush of emotion and nostalgia, and for an instant—just an instant—you envision, as clear as day, that continued trajectory towards the most optimal of all possible futures, with L swayed to your side...

The vision fades. You are idealistic, not stupid.

Nevertheless, you will regret killing him. You _will_ kill him. You are stronger now. For months you have shared the enemy's bed and broken bread in his house; you have called him friend. His every next move is as obvious as though he is reading them off a list to you. In exchange L knows everything about Light. He knows nearly nothing about you or what you have become.

"I'm all right," you say. "A notebook that kills? Hard to believe..."

The Death Note is warm under your hand. It feels good to be alive again; it feels like a miracle.

_-end_


End file.
